Month: August 2019

A Baseball Fan for Life

by scribblingzebrasjumphigh, posted in Uncategorized

By: Sue Ann

I never thought I’d enjoy watching sports. Honestly, the only sport I watch on TV is tennis. I’ve got to say though, that baseball has really grown on me lately.

I used to wear the Yankees baseball cap because it’s the only one I have. Not because I like the team. But the Yankees are actually my favorite baseball team now.

You can ask me about any member on the Yankees team: their batting average, where they were transferred from, the number of home runs they’ve hit this season, etc. And I can tell you the answer. I guess you can say I’ve spent way too much of my free time watching all the Yankees games. It’s kind of hard not to when your boyfriend is a hardcore sports fan, haha.

I used to have a really hard time remembering all the names of players on the Yankees team because there are so many of them! But I’ve come up with my own naming system. I remember Didi as Didi’s Dumplings, one of the best dumpling places near Alex’s home. Did you know that Didi’s real name is Mariekson? Yea, sounds nothing like Didi. Gleyber, because it rhymes with the word “labor” as in Labor Day. Edwin Encarnacion is a hard one to forget because he has a parrot on his shoulder (no joke) every time he hits a home run. DJ, because he has the highest batting average on the team. Point is, it’s hard to forget their names. And I guess it’s safe to say I’ve traded in Shark Tank episodes for Yankees games.

Connection and Distance

by Juliet Godwin, posted in Posts By Juliet

By: Juliet Godwin

I’m someone for whom it takes a while to make real, close friends. I usually form stronger connections with people over time, but those connections are something I value above all else and crave when I don’t have them. I’m also someone who values my time spent alone, so not being with friends at every moment isn’t something that I dislike; I would even say that it’s something I need periodically. But eventually I always want to connect again.

It took me a while to make a few really close friends in high school, and in college I’ve found myself in the same situation. I know that there is nothing wrong with this; I even think it can make for the best kind of relationships if it suits you, and I value their friendship a lot. But it can be difficult when my close friends aren’t around and I want to be with people. I’ve been trying to get better at making and maintaining more casual friendships, but it’s all kind of difficult and at times lonely for me.

This summer, I haven’t gotten to spend that much time with my close friends from high school because our work schedules never seemed to line up. I’m not worried that we won’t remain friends throughout college, but I am sad that it seems like everyone in the world is with their friends but me. It’s dumb, but I guess I’m just annoyed about it having taken so long for me to make friends that I love in high school and now needing to start all over in college. Eventually I’ll have to start all over when I graduate. This isn’t to say that I won’t keep being friends with my friends now when we are apart, but we all need friends where we actually live as well. Enjoying time by myself doesn’t mean I want to be alone all of the time, after all. It’s difficult to go from seeing your best friends everyday, trapped in the same place with them for eight hours a day, five days a week, to hardly seeing them at all. Spending that much time with even the people I wasn’t close friends with created a community that I knew. I know that this will come with time in college and in every new environment I become a part of, but repeating the process is just a lot for me, I guess.

I was going to call this post “Staying in Touch” because I thought I was going to write more about staying close with friends that I used to see everyday and now live far away from, but it took a little bit of a different direction. This is just the way I’ve been feeling lately, I guess. I hope it wasn’t too depressing of a post and was maybe even a little bit relatable!

Palate Cleansers

by Juliet Godwin, posted in Posts by Haruka, Posts By Juliet

By: Haruka and Juliet

Do you ever watch TV shows that upset you to your core? Or even a movie that you just can’t go to sleep right after? I watched GoodFellas, and it made me sick to my stomach. I had to watch something that would make me laugh right after, because I just didn’t want to sit with that movie. Sometimes, I feel overwhelmed by watching something like The Handmaid’s Tale, or other dark shows that I need to watch something afterward, so that it won’t negatively impact my mental health. And sometimes, you just need an hour or two in your day when you’re watching stupid videos on YouTube for no apparent reason, and then you feel completely gross later for wasting so much time. That’s how I often feel after watching YouTube videos on secrets about the Bachelor franchise. Sometimes, a palate cleanser can be too much. But sometimes, it’s just what you need. Palate cleansers don’t always have to be funny, just something that I’m not too invested in.

Anyway, this is a list of the palate cleansers that Juliet and I came up with for whenever we just need to watch something else: 

Light Comedies: 

  • Brooklyn Nine-nine
  • Parks and Recreation
  • Broad City
  • Drunk History

Youtube Videos: 

  • Hot Ones
  • FBE React videos
  • Movie trailers
  • Wired linguistics videos and other Wired videos
  • Celebrity interviews (talk show and press junket)
  • Games/other segments on talk shows
  • Dance choreography
  • Vogue beauty videos
  • Vine compilations
  • Bon Appetit channel
  • Buzzfeed Tasty videos or Buzzfeed in general
  • College Humor
  • Cut channel
  • Saturday Night Live clips
  • Music videos/covers/performances

Stand Up (Netflix Specials or YouTube Clips)

Reality TV:

  • The Bachelor franchise (The Bachelorette, Bachelor in Paradise)
  • Are You The One? 
  • RuPaul’s Drag Race
  • Skin Wars
  • Blown Away

Shows We’ve Already Watched:

  • Bob’s Burgers (or other cartoons)
  • Gilmore Girls
  • Queer Eye
  • Old episodes of Doctor Who
  • Early Grey’s Anatomy

Procedurals: 

  • Law and Order: SVU
  • Criminal Minds
  • Elementary

Weeding Gig

by zamylaridae, posted in Posts By Zamy

I don’t often do gardening, but when I did, Mrs. New York 2019 showed up as well. 

It’s not the highlight of the event,  but that does make me chuckle a bit.

But that’s not how the story started. That’s what I found out (and I find it quite wonderful) at the very end of my experience. 

The scholarship that I was awarded to do the internship has a requirement – give some attention and time to one volunteer community service at the location we are at. No other prescriptions. The area we can to apply it is absolutely up to us and our creative fluids that race along our veins.

Since I am in New York City, volunteering opportunities, as everything else, abound. All you need to do is really want to help, and a bit of googling. 

So, my volunteering choice fell on the City Tutors where I am a literacy tutor. I chose it because I looked for something connected to education, and because, on a larger point, I  love teaching. And if I can teach people reading and writing that I myself find to be miracles of this life, that’s even better. I won’t go into detail on this one.. Maybe next time. 

But…

In addition to the City Tutors, I wanted to do something that would take me outdoors and will cover me in paint, dirt, dust, whatever. Carpenting would do as well.

And theeeeen… 

I found Hunter’s Point Parks Conservancy on Volunteermatch.com.  At the weekend, in the scorching July heat, we planted ourselves at a park on Long Island to pull the weeds out of the ground, made mountains out of them, soon to be collected and composted. And tried to stay hydrated. 

While doing that, you somehow end up talking to people around you, who try to help the city every week or so. They come from all kinds of walks of life, students, tourists, bank workers, housewives, a journalist, who brought his kids with him, just to give some love to the city and have some bonding time with them. You learn that people do care. They want to give that piece of the NYC puzzle a little gentle stroke of care, to show that a person can make an impact, even if is just going to take a few hours a week and several drops of sweat.

And we did make an impact. The patch we took care of did look better! 

“The “Catch” “

At the end of the session, we started taking photos in our beautiful uniforms (they always remind me of a highlighter), and then one volunteer pulled out a sash that ran “MRS. NEW YORK 2019.”

And that’s so so wonderful! That’s what I loved seeing! She really is Mrs. New York, loving the city she lives is and not just from the distance or verbally, but actually puts on those gloves and shows what it’s like to really care!

Mrs. New York 2019

So, if you’re ready for a helpful adventure, you know what to do! 😉